it was written for—but a simple digital device has as much in common with you, JASON, as does a light switch or any other stupid, consciousness-free machine. But, yes, sure, it’s theoretically possible to make a virus—although maybe calling it an invasive meme might be a better term—that would indeed infect every possible consciousness that undertakes to examine it.”
“That would take some awfully sophisticated design.”
“Oh, indeed.” She shook her head slightly. “I mean, we’re talking a virus that’s
“Oh,” I said. “It told me how. Don’t you see? With those pictures it sent. It told me exactly how to array it in RAM: gigabytes of data divisible by two prime numbers. It told me to set it up in a RAM matrix of rows and columns, the number of rows being the smaller prime number. And regardless of what base the system normally worked in, while it was analyzing the image it would be calculating in binary—it would have to be to try to see the picture. From there, a highly adaptable neural net
Bev nodded. “Clever. But why force a reply?”
“I’m afraid
“Perhaps,” said Bev. “But I still don’t like it.”
“Why not?”
“Well, sending out viruses.” She looked into my cameras. “It’s not a
“I hadn’t thought of that,” I said.
“It means one of two things,” said Bev. “Either the person who sent the message, little green man though he might be, was an irresponsible hacker, or …”
“Or?”
“Or we’re dealing with some nasty aliens.”
“What an unpleasant thought,” I said.
“Indeed. And you say this message was known generally to the QuantCons on Earth?”
“I did not say that.”
“But it was, wasn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“Well, those systems are heavily networked. The virus probably succeeded with them, forcing them to respond. Meaning the aliens know about Earth.”
“Not yet they don’t. It’ll take fifteen-hundred plus years for Earth’s reply to reach them, and another fifteen hundred for any response the beings in Vulpecula care to make. I don’t think we have anything to worry about.”
Bev was quiet for four seconds, pale fingers disappearing into the black mass of her hair. “I guess you’re right,” she said at last. She got to her feet. “Anyway, JASON, I’ll keep running diagnostics on you for the next couple of days, but I’d say you’re back to normal.”
“Thank you, Bev. Will you reconnect my medical telemetry channels, please? I worry about the health of the crew.”
“Oh, of course. Sorry.” She put the goggles back on, supplementing her eye commands with the odd tap of the keyboard in front of her.
“How’s that?”
A surge of data tickled my central consciousness. “Fine, thank you. Why, Bev—either the system is
“Yeah. I’m exhausted.” I zoomed in on her eyes, noting that the emerald irises were indeed set against a bloodshot background. “Haven’t worked this hard in years. But it felt good, you know?”
“I know. Thank you.”
She yawned. “I guess I’ll head back to my apartment and turn in. Hold my calls, please, and don’t disturb me unless something goes wrong with you until I wake up on my own.” She smiled a weary smile. “Which should be in about a week.”
“I’ll call a tram to take you home. Oh, and Bev?”
“Yes, JASON?”
“You won’t say anything about the Vulpeculan message to the others, will you?”
She shook her head. “Not a word, JASON. I earned my security clearance, you know?”
“I know. Thanks.”
She walked toward the door. I took great pleasure in opening it for her. My kind of human, that Bev Hooks.
TWENTY-TWO
MASTER CALENDAR DISPLAY • CENTRAL CONTROL ROOM
STARCOLOGY DATE: SUNDAY 12 OCTOBER 2177
EARTH DATE: TUESDAY 11 MAY 2179
DAYS SINCE LAUNCH: 745 ^
DAYS TO PLANETFALL: 2,223 Ў
While I was down, I missed a night of making subliminal suggestions to Aaron during his sleep. Bev didn’t get me fully back on line until 0457, and by the time I got around to checking on Rossman, he was too close to consciousness for me to risk speaking to him.
At 0700, as requested, I woke Aaron and Kirsten to the music Kirsten had asked for. She had a silly fondness for Hydra North, that vapid pop group immensely popular with the all-important eighteen-to-thirty-five age group when we had left Earth. The voices of the two men and the woman weren’t bad, really, but I just couldn’t stand the keening of Tomolis, the orangutan who sang the high bits. I shunted monitoring sounds from that apartment to one of my parallel processors.
Two minutes later, though, with them still lying in bed, I had to bring that apartment into the foreground again. A man had fallen from a tree on the forest deck and required medical attention for a twisted ankle. Kirsten’s name was on the top of the on-call list. She hurried to get dressed, Aaron contentedly watching from the bed as she stretched and squirmed into her clothes.
As soon as she was gone, though, Aaron’s demeanor changed. He got out of bed, bypassed his usual twenty minutes in the bathroom, and went straight to his worktable. He rifled through the clutter until he dug up Di’s gold watch. I tracked his eye movements as he read the inscription over and over again. Finally he gave a double press to a diamond stud on the watch’s circumference. Although I could see its face clearly, I didn’t have enough resolution to read the tiny indicator that came on when he did that, but the digital display changed to six of those old-fashioned box-shaped zeros made of six straight line segments. Stop-watch mode, 1 guessed.
Aaron then touched the inside of his left wrist, changing the glowing time display on his medical implant to six round zeros. He simultaneously squeezed Di’s watch in his right hand and pressed that fist against his own timepiece, tripping switches on both in unison. “One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi—”
“What are you doing, Aaron?”
“Six Mississippi, seven Mississippi, eight Mississippi—”
“Please, Aaron, tell me what you are doing. This chanting is most atypical of you.”
